The musketman unit

[Feyd]

Ahh, but after that first shot, the bayonet comes out and the crossbowmen have to fight against a well designed and trained weapon (bayonet jab, bayonet slash, butt of the musket to the face, musket used to block swords). The first real weapon to allow for ranged and hand to hand without switching...

[Pipe tooth]

a basic longbowmen could be trained to pepper a target in a matter of days, tho lacking overall disapline of course

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Pipe tooth
So the crossbow could fire faster than previously thought... but the longbow is still a far better weapon in my opinion.

You haven't seen the repeating crossbow yet, hm?

[zombielordzero]

but then those bayonet weilding muskets would have to close the 380 meters that a crossbolt can travel (at its height), plenty of time to get picked off several dozen at a time with each voley from the crossbolts

nice idea for the repeating crossbow, here are a few links:

http://www.atarn.org/chinese/rept_xbow.htm

"10 crossbolts in 15 seconds... perfect for blunting an oncomming rush of troops"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repeating_crossbow

and for maximum range for both longbow and crossbow:

http://www.thebeckoning.com/medieval/crossbow/cross_l_v_c.html

"Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey loosed a bolt from an actual Medieval crossbow spanned with a cranequin and achieve a cast of 490 yards. The ordinary 15th. century crossbow would likely cast a bolt 370-380 yards."

"Historical evidence would indicate that in the hands of a well-trained longbowmen, distances of 250-350 yards were commonly attained. A few modern archers have regularly achieved distances of 350-450 yards with reproduction longbows. Inigo Simot loosed an arrow 462 yards 9 inches in 1914, and there is a claim of someone loosing an arrow 482 yards with a longbow."

[johnmcd]

Originally posted by Pipe tooth
a basic longbowmen could be trained to pepper a target in a matter of days, tho lacking overall disapline of course

A basic archer could be trained in that time. The long bow is an absolutely fearsome weapon, it’s just not something that can be drawn by someone without years of training, let alone used effectively.

[Proteus_MST]

Originally posted by johnmcd
A basic archer could be trained in that time. The long bow is an absolutely fearsome weapon, it’s just not something that can be drawn by someone without years of training, let alone used effectively.

Yep,
a normal recurve bow for archery according to the FITA-Rules
normally has a draw weight in the range of 20-50 lbs (with ~20 lbs being rather a bow for kids or beginners).
English longbows however had draw weights ranging from 60 to > 100 lbs (and unlike modern compound bows the archer had to draw the full weight from the beginnind till the release [while with compound bows you only have to draw the full weight at the beginning])

[Last Conformist]

Heavily armoured cavalry was used well into the 17th century in Europe. The knight needed some unhorsing.

[Zoid]

Originally posted by Hauptman


However game mechanic wise, the knight also includes the dragoon. Muskets only made knights stop wearing armor. The newfound speed made up for the lack of defense against old weapons.

So unless you'd like to add a new unit called "Dragoons" like civ2, then i donot see the reason to change muskets to give a bonus vs knights. because like i said the muskets real bonus is that he takes away that knights "shock" promotion. Few people give there units the 25% vs gunpowder promo before gunpowder comes on the scene. so in effect the musket is a huge advance when they hit the battle fields.

Also their short lifespan negates the need to really rely on them to continue combat beyond that "first gunpowder unit" era.

I changed my mind. Defensive bonuses for the musketmen is wrong both game-wise and how it worked IRL.

[Pipe tooth]

Originally posted by zombielordzero
links:

http://www.atarn.org/chinese/rept_xbow.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repeating_crossbow

http://www.thebeckoning.com/medieval/crossbow/cross_l_v_c.html

very interesting, thanks

[drtechno]

Originally posted by Dr Zoidberg
It wasn´t a single thing that made knights obsolete, but rather a combination of things. The crossbow was one of them. And IIRC it was only forbidden for peasants to own crossbows.

Actually it was the longbow.

[kseecs16]

I think it is important to remember that there is never 1 reason for anything. I will say that if their were one reason for Knights becoming less prevalent it would not be the crossbow because it was just not applied nearly enough to have that sort of impact.

Regardless, the original point of muskets having an advantage against cavalry to me seems disproven.

1. Muskets do not fight alone, and particularly do not do so against cavalry which can close the maximum firing distance in the time of 1-2 very inaccurate volleys. Btw - musket bearing infantry did not fire in volley's, they fired individually - the volley was a latter development and would be innappropriate for the musketman unit as represented in the game.

2. Musketman always fought in units with pikeman/halberdiers and they were the anti cavalry and melee component. This is well modelled in the game because an army of Pike's, Musketman, and Knights would be very well balanced until the advent of grenadiers who obsolete the pikeman for the most part.

3. Heavy cavalry remained long after the first portable firearms, and were even quite succesfull situationally.

4. It was the combination of artillery changing the emphasis of warfare to siegecraft, combined arms (gun,pike, artillery), and the armor penetrating capacity of gunpower weapons that led to the obsoletion of heavily armored cavarly.

Despite the armor penetrating capacity of gunpowder weapons it was really not as major a detterent to armored knights as the first two factors until rifling, and by then the heavily armored knight was already gone almost everywhere because of the other two reasons and a desire for mobility in shock troops as tactics evolved and the battlefield expanded.

GO BEARS.

[Dr Strangelove]

Bayonets didn't appear until the development of the flintlock in the 18th century, by which time the bowman and the knight had been gone for nearly a century. Before that time musketeers generally carried a sword as a sidearm. When infantry attacked the musketeers and pikemen advanced in column. The musketeers fired off as many rounds as they could, then when they closed with ther enemy they drew their swords and used the pikes of their comrades as a protective fence from which they could reach out to slash at the enemy then dart back under the protection of the pikes as needed. Likewise when cavalry, either knights, hussars or curaissiers attacked these formations they ran into a solid packed mass of men. Their horses could not penetrate the fence of pikes, but the musketeers could bang away at the men on horses at leisure. Eventually better guns were designed. Then musketeers began deploying in lines, offering a much larger volume of fire than could the columns. Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries the debate over line vs column continued, until some whippersnapper invented the machinegun.

I would argue for having 2 early gun infantry units - the arquebusier, with its poor accuracy and unreliable firing mechanism having the value of the current musketeer, and the (flintlock) musketeer with a higher rating against cavalry and melee weapons.

The knight was replaced not by the dragoon, but by the curaissier, a cavalryman protected by a metal breastplate and backplate sitting on a large powerful horse capable of carrying him at a true gallop speed

[Urban Ranger]

Were the horses armoured as well?

[Dr Strangelove]

Of the Curaissier? No.

One of the reasons that the fully armored knight was abandoned is that they were just too darned slow. Even matchlock weapons could manage to get off a couple of shots at them when they charged. The new cavalry was much faster. The infantry could rarely fire more than one volley before being overrun.

It's also true that knights were relatively rich landowners who if united behind a power duke could challenge the power of the king. That's another reason why they had to go.

In England the knights were literally wiped out by the War of the Roses. In France they were bought off by the kng and turned into usless courtiers. In Germany and Italy the division of the nation into innumerable tiny feudal holdings guarenteed that these nations would remain weak until the situation was corrected. In all cases the knight had to go.

[zombielordzero]

so the knight went from being a tank to being a shock troop, also a quick responce force so it could move from town to town with great speed.

also sounds like they either found a steady supply of horses, or didnt care if they survived the battle. a horse wont last very long on a battlefield without any armor.